Tasting the 2009 wines; get feedback from friends

After a few trial blending sessions on my own, I thought it would be a good idea to get some feedback from my wine making friends and also to see how their wines were coming along. So I had a tasting in late February of the 2009 vintage.

There were 6 of us at the tasting including my wine making friends, Joe and Sandy, Mike, and Harry.

None of the wines are ready to bottle, so this is just an early "barrel" tasting to see how the wines are coming along and perhaps see what may need to be done in the future.

I prepared 3 of my white trial blends, along with the 3 individual varietals, and 2 red wines.

With each wine maker bringing a number of wines, it was a tasting that could get out of hand easily....My tasting notes and memory of the wines started out pretty good, then got very sketchy toward the end. Luckily Harry made a voice recording of our conversations so I can try to decipher what was said about the wines....

With all the wines to taste, and my duties as host, I could not focus on the wines as much as I wanted but here are my impressions:

2009 is a very good wine year and I'm generally happy with my wines.

I'll need to make some different red varietals next year... as I'm ending up with too much light red wine...

Mike, Joe and I all made Sauvignon Blanc {SB} from juice picked up the same day from the same tank and it was very interesting to see the differences in the three wines.

I like Joe's higher acid, non Malo Lactic fermented Sauvignon Blanc a lot and I may re-think my strategy regarding ML fermentation.

Everyone said my white wine blends were good: Blend #1 was 50% SB and 50% Malvasia.

Blend #2 was 33% SB, 33% Pinot Grigio and 33% Malvasia.

Blend #3 was just blend #2 with the addition of tartaric acid.

It was very interesting see how the addition of the acid made blend #3 more lively. It as my favorite blend.

Joe's Grenache Rose was very good. But it contained 3-4% residual sugar and has since kicked off a fermentation.... so it will be interesting to taste it again later on... See my blog entry on Residual sugar.

By the time we got to the reds, I had reached my tasting limit, but I do remember that Mike had a very nice Dolcetto.

A very fun day!

Slow Time in the cellar --- redeux

It's cold out there! So I'm not real motivated to do much in the cellar. But here are some suggestions of things to do, where you don't spend all your time in the cold...

• Taste your wines and create trial blends



• Visit tasting rooms, make new wine and grape contacts



• Repair Equipment



• Do a Inventory of your cellar



• Plan a dinner to drink those wines you have been saving, or old bottles discovered during inventory



• Make sure your wine making notes are up to date



• Throw a party to celebrate last year's vintage

Today I'll talk about creating trial blends.

Your new wines are now far enough along in their development so you can taste them and get a good idea of what they will be like when finished.

I like to taste my wines whenever I rack them to check their progress and make sure there are no problems developing. But now is a good time to be more critical of a new wines strengths and weaknesses, and plan to address those issues. I believe strongly in blending as a means to address a wines weaknesses and produce a wine that you want to drink.

Blending is a topic that deserves it own entry to cover it in more detail, but here is a brief description on what I'm doing to create trail blends.

Technique:

Pull a small sample of each wine that may benefit from blending, say 1/10 bottle.

Taste each wine. Do you like it? Does it have characteristics that you don't like as much? Does it have a component that needs a little tweaking, e.g. low acid, nose, etc. What are it's strong points. Take Notes!! You can get hopelessly confused if you don't!

Formulate a blend of two or more wines to address weaknesses noted when tasting each wine. I do this with a 40 ML beaker. e.g. 20 ml of wine A, 20 ml of wine B poured into a glass for a 1 to 1 blend.

Taste the blend. Take notes! Did the blend work or not.. do another blend, repeat. It is unlikely that a blend will magically be great at this point, but the idea is to point to the direction that will work in the future for the final blend.

My trial blending of Sauvignon Blanc and Malvasia Bianca.

To be fair, I'm not starting at zero here... in 2007 I bottled a blend of 50% Sauvignon Blanc and 50% Malvaia that I liked a lot. So that seems like a good starting point for the 2009 vintage.

I pulled 1/10 of each wine and tasted them:

Sauvignon Blanc {SB}: Good color, light straw yellow, very strong aggressive nose initially of herbal and grassy character. Good fruit flavors, but a hot finish of higher Alcohol?

Malvasia Bianca: Good color, light straw yellow, Nice nose with floral components, thick in the mouth, good flavors and good acid. Clean finish.

So I like the Malvasia more than the Sauvignon Blanc... so my blending strategy is how to make the Sauvignon Blanc better.

I think it's easiest to think in terms of portions instead of percentages for blending...e.g. 1 to 1, 2 to 1, etc.

I try the 1 to 1, blend mixing 20ml of each wine in a glass. I like this blend. It seems that the Malvasia floral components mask some of the aggressive grassiness of the SB and adds some interesting components to the flavors and smooths out the rough finish.

I wonder if the addition of some acid will help? I add a few grains of Tartaric acid to the glass and taste... seems the acid makes the blend taste thinner? anyway this does not seem to be a good direction to go...

Next I try a 2 to 1 blend of SB to Malvasia. I think this blend is OK, but not as good as the 1 to 1 blend... The idea would be to see how much Malvasia it takes to get a good blend. {It will always be the case where you have a good wine and question how much you are willing to add to a lessor wine to make it better...}

So for now a 1 to 1 blend seems like the right direction, but I have one other white wine, a Pinot Grigio to try in a blend... So a few more trail blending sessions are needed before any decisions are made.....

....And the left over blending wines were consumed with dinner!

Playing Cellar Rat - Checking the wines

Feeling the need to check this year's wines before I leave on vacation for a few days; I tasted them all and racked the Sauvignon Blanc.

The Pinot Grigio is tasting OK... it seems lacking in any real character, not bad, just an ordinary white. Isn't that the rap on Pinot Grigio anyway?

Malvasia Biance is tasting very good just like my 2007 at this stage. The 2007 turned out very good. Thick, floral, clean with good acid.

The Sauvignon Blanc is going to be a big wine. Lots of flavor, but perhaps a little hot in the finish with some bitterness as well. Acid level may need some adjustments... I'm thinking I may need to do some blending with this one...

The Nebbiolo is very light in color. I'm disappointed since I thought I was making a heavier red wine. That said, it has great fruit flavors, a little coffee in the nose, and a bramble like finish... It will make a pleasant light red.

The Zinfandel is also light in color. More raspberry in color where the Nebbiolo is more brick red.
The flavors mirror the color with light raspberry fruit and good acid.... another light red.... {good thing I've made some heavy reds in the past that are available in the cellar!}

So, no disasters wine making wise, but maybe no real standouts either this year... but really too early to tell.

On another note: I always check out Trader Joe's wines to see what bargains they may have. The "Blue Fin" Pinot Noir at $3.99 is a nice light red with good fruit character and clean finish.

I mention the "Blue Fin" wine since I'm going to post an entry very soon talking about the costs involved in Home Wine making. "Think you are going to save money-think again!" So watch for that and check out "Blue Fin" and also "Down Under" Chardonnay.

Nebbiolo and Zinfandel - Day 10 Pressing

Sept. 20. This is day 10 for the Nebbiolo and Zinfandel, and it's time to press. The fermentation was a fast one lasting about 8 days. I let the must sit for another two days to hopefully extract more color and some tannins since it seemed like the wine(s) will be light in color and body.

You can tell when the fermentation is finished by measuring the brix, or by the amount of CO2 coming off when you punch the cap down. Measuring the brix will give you a false reading since the must now contains alcohol which is lighter than water... there should be a formula someplace for adjusting the reading..... I should research that.... anyone know? please comment!

Anyway, when the CO2 has blown off the must it is time to press, since the wine is now getting air exposure.

Step 1: is getting all the equipment ready... If you cleaned everything from your last pressing; it's not too much work. See the pic on the right... clean press, catch bucket, clean carboy waiting...

Step 2 :I like to rack off as much of the "free run" wine as possible. I found a great tool to aid in this step... it's a stainless steel tube about 2 feet long with holes in the sides. It is wide enough to insert a racking hose into it. The holes in the tube will allow the wine in and keep the skins out...

Step 3: While I'm racking off the free run, I use a bucket to scoop out the skins and fill the press. My wife watches the catch bucket under the press, and changes the full bucket for a empty one as needed. The wine is poured into the carboys.

Step 4: When the press is full, put on the top, add the wood blocks and press. Ratchet down the blocks, watch the wine flow, wait for the pressure to ease, then repeat.... You're done when the resistance makes it very difficult to ratchet down the blocks another step, or the handle gets down to the top of the basket.

Step 5: be sure to taste the new wine. Yes, the wine will be changing quite a bit over the next couple of years, but this first taste is telling; how is the color, what's the tannin level, high or low acid, any off odors, varietal character in the nose, etc. See the video where Doris, my wife and I taste the Nebbiolo and Zinfandel.

Step 5: Add fermentation locks to all the carboys, and move them into the cellar. Not an easy step for me as the cellar is full!

Step 6: Clean everything...this step takes as much time as all the previous ones... So we saved some time by pressing both the Nebbiolo and Zinfandel one after the other.

Here's a video of the process and first taste of the reds.

And fitting the carboys into the cellar....

Malvasia - Day 7- adding ML Culture and Yeast food

Day 7: Well the weather has been hot and the nighttime temperatures not that cool, so the fermentation has gone faster than expected.

During the end of fermentation a yeast food is added to make sure that the fermentation will finish. Also I add ML {Malo-Lactic} culture to the wine at this point.

ML culture will facilitate a ML fermentation where Malo acid is converted to Lactic acid. An ML fermentation will soften a wine, but adds some characteristics that some people do not want ...

See this link for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malolactic_fermentation

For me, I want all my wines to go through a ML fermentation if possible, since the wine will be more stable once bottled. The worst case is for the wine to go through an ML fermentation after it is bottled! So I try to force an ML fermentation as early as possible.

One negative side affect of an ML fermentation is the lowering of the crispness of the acid taste. If this is an issue for the wine, I will add acid {tartaric acid} prior to bottling to bring back the crispness... it all depends on what I'm trying to do with the particular wine.

OK the fun part... I get my first taste of the Malvasia! After all, that's the reason the make wine, the drinking!

I try to taste each wine at every step along the way, to build my knowledge of the wine over time and help plan out things I may need to do with the wine in the future.